I very much liked it. It was a good story, I loved the Chalassa romance, and it had a lot of interesting content.

On the note of the romance, it was very well written, but being a fan who swings more on the VN side than the RPG side, I would have enjoyed more of it, like a few more conversations, and maybe it actually coming up outside the romance itself and the ending. But it's very good the way it is . Another thing that would have been interesting is that since the twins don't share romance options it could have been fun to hook your sibling up with one of them as well, as a kind of background thing that they came to you about .

Spoiler:

The ending felt somewhat anticlimactic but in its own way, I can appreciate that. It's not often that a game like this doesn't end with some major encounter, and while feeling somewhat odd just from being different, it's actually kind of cool. The more I think about it, the more fitting this feels for the game though, as the group didn't have a quest that they were embarking on, they were just adventuring. The very ending part of the ending with Moran and your half brother just came out of left field though. I mean, I liked it and all, but it was just so random. Kind of like in a mystery novel when the killer turns out to be a random person mentioned once if ever. "Oh by the way that wolf you found in the beginning is your half brother, that was your mother you were going to skin, and you are a shapeshifter too." It would have been fun to actually get to shapeshift but I get chronologically why that doesn't work .

It had a lot of interesting lore, but sometimes it felt like we just glanced at what there was.

Shackelsplit was an interesting place that was building some good storylines, though how act 4 came in left most of them unfinished.

I'll be honest, by the end of the game I wanted someone to gag Krimm so she would just shut up about fighting , and she called Riley whiny... but she was still a good character .

As far as describing it with five attributes, Engrossing, Amusing, Compelling, Interesting, Cool.

I'm sure I'll think of some more feedback at some point but this is all that's coming to mind at the moment, but I very much liked the story

(Just to make this clear, I am giving my honest opinion, and I'm not trying to be sycophantic but it's kind of hard not to when you're giving praise )

I'm very tired right now, so sorry if that comes through as me being curt or whatever. Overall, I enjoyed myself, and I don't think I ever commented, "Well, that's just dumb" to myself. I'll go into some detail about stuff, but the intent is nitpicking more than strong critique.

What I enjoyed most about the story was the character interaction. Even if sometimes characters felt a little boiled down to their essentials in what they had to say, most of the time conversations seemed to flow pretty naturally and with a good amount of wit. This became more impressive as the party grew and everyone had to participate in the conversations. Obviously, everybody will have favorites and not so favorites, but nobody came across to me as obnoxious or totally superfluous. I particularly enjoyed the flashback stories, especially since I had the strong feeling that we couldn't trust them very well; they were being told to us by people with personal motives. That told us a lot about the characters, and really helped shape them.

I felt the plot itself was a bit unfocused. There wasn't really a strong red thread through our adventure, especially once we get to Act III, where we muck about on various random quests pretty much just because we can. This leads to our finale, which felt a little weak, possibly because Act III has sidetracked us from our main story. Act IV has an optional conclusion to our Act II adventure (which I kind of felt should have been obligatory since Act II filled a lot of our time), a conclusion to our Act I personal story (which I felt lacked something in the way of interaction and impact, since this was where we started out), a conclusion to our romance (good stuff for the ones I've seen so far, this is where I've felt most involved and invested, now wish it had taken up more space than it did), and something about some dark mages (which felt kind of unrelated and uninteresting since we're dealing with conclusions here, not new storylines).

Hmm...having just finished the game minutes before this, my general impressions are somewhere along the lines of Act 1 is decent as a setup for the entire game, Act 2 is very good (a bit too linear but forgiveable since the focus kept the writing sharp and tight), Act 3 was just mostly wandering around doing sidequests. Shacklesplit could have been given a bit more attention to, rather than just having the party run around doing oddjobs for people. It could use more events happening in town and meetings with other NPCs to give a bit more life to the city. Act 4 felt...rushed, very rushed like people just wanted to finish the game and get on with the next project (sorry for saying this but that's how I felt playing Act 4). The little twist at the end that came at the end was definitely odd and came out of the blue almost like a Final Fantasy final boss since there was nothing done to foreshadow that fact.

With a smaller cast, the characters feel much better written compared to Loren and the constant banter and bickering amongst the party members made everyone feel closer and more tightly knit. My personal favourite part was in Act 3 during a certain's character's revelation

Spoiler:

where it turns out that Krimm was lying to everyone about her story, reversing roles here and there. Didn't really expect it, especially from a person who kept spewing all that honor stuffs all throughout the game.

The combat was good, much better done than Loren where all I did was increase Skill, speed and SP regen and used that to bulldoze my way through every fight by spamming normal attacks in Hard mode. Now you have to be a little bit smarter than the AI in planning your level-ups properly, making sure you have enough consumables and active skills. My favourite fight (and the most frustrating one) was against Deceit until I realized that he threw his most annoying attacks against the backrow only so I reversed my team's position and proceeded to slow pound him into the ground.

So while I do think that Seasons of the Wolf is a good game with a better combat system and levelling up mechanic compared to Loren, I also feel that the second half of the game doesn't quite measure up to the first portion of the game. Still glad I picked up this game though since the combat portion is much improved on and I relish the challenge.

Well at least I'm happy I did my part (coding/gameplay/design) better than Loren this time
Jokes apart, when you say about "rushed last part" you mean it because it was shorter, or ? I thought was too short too, that's why I've added some extra sidequests like the centaurs, minotaurs, gnolls. However as you know if you read my other ramblings, the game definitely became too big!
So I think probably the main error was on my part during the planning stage, I think Taleweaver did a good job following my storyboard. Probably the truth is that making such a game is not simple for smaller teams. I am now somewhat worried about Loren 2-3, even if there are two people writing it already, I'm starting to think that when I do such games I need to have a main writer for the story/romance and then another to do all the sidequests/minor stuff, because otherwise maybe the amount of work is a bit insane. I'm still learning to work on such games, as you can imagine is much more difficult than a VN/dating sim

For me, it was the pacing I think. It felt like the game just wanted the player to rush through Act 4 and quickly get to the end so that it can finally be done. Yeah I read some of your earlier posts mentioning that you felt that you were taking too long on this game and wanted to move on to the other games that's on your list so I understand wanting to move on to the newest project. But I think some of that feeling probably slipped into the final Act because Act 4 is just 'Go to A, then go to B and then finish up with C.' Story-wise it makes sense, but the extra quests just fills like filler, there for the sake of padding. I still like the game of course, just feel that Act 4 is weaker compared to the rest of the game.

Well the whole story including the sidequests was written since months though (early this year), so my frustration towards the end of the game has nothing to do with it I mean is not like that I cut parts of it on purpose, or something like that.
And yes, I understand that what everyone is saying is that basically the whole game itself is quite good, but were disappointed by the last part only. The game so far in pre-orders is doing better than Loren, so that's promising. Of course it still means nothing until it is "fully released" and shows up on biggest portals like Steam

I think in Act 4, it was hard to maintain a sense of urgency, allow for multiple endings/outcomes (depending on how the player deals with Bear) AND still make it as long as, say, Act 3. What I could have done was turn each of the three paths into longer adventures (i.e. have the party go through longer ordeals), but seeing how much more work that would have meant for poor Jack, I decided not to.

It's nice that you liked the character interactions and development. I tried to make it something special.

But seriously, no one expected the final revelation? After all the hints I gave throughout the story?